Blockchain Investigation Tool Created By BitFury

Blockchain infrastructure provider BitFury has created an all-in-one bitcoin blockchain investigative tool designed for use by law enforcement organizations and financial institutions.

Called Crystal, it provides a comprehensive view of the bitcoin blockchain and uses advanced analytics and data scraping to map alleged suspicious transactions and related entities. It will allow users to detect and examine purported criminal activity that takes place on the bitcoin blockchain and avoid interacting with tokens that are associated with illegal transactions.

The burden of proof would still be on law enforcement to determine illegal activity after amassing the data.

Crystal works by gathering information via analytics and data scraping to give a score on the legality of a transaction or the address. Crystal’s main function is to trace bitcoin transactions till the point of withdrawal or the final address where the digital asset is stored. Therefore, it will signal any suspicious activity on the blockchain.

A light version of the Crystal toolset will be available to individuals for free, while the full paid version will be sold to enterprises in March.

“Public blockchains have the potential to fundamentally improve our day-to-day lives and be strong forces for social good,” said Valery Vavilov, CEO of the Bitfury Group. “Unfortunately, there are people who exploit public blockchains and take advantage of their pseudonymity to commit crimes. Bitfury’s new Crystal tool will make it much easier to identify and track criminal activities on the blockchain. With Crystal, we are taking a critical step toward ensuring that the bitcoin blockchain and other public blockchains have a safe and secure future.”